Search Result Hijacking & Social Signals

Google finally broke their silence this week by releasing Panda 21. This is the company’s first publicly announced update in almost a month (Top Heavy 2 was announced back on October 9). Here’s the official tweet:

This is one of the most interesting (and terrifying) posts from last week because Dan Petrovic shows just how easy it is to hijack a site’s search results.

Search result hijacking is made possible by Google’s treatment of duplicate content. When Google identifies two duplicate documents, they pick the document with the higher PageRank, and they forward all links for the duplicate document to the document they selected. This image is an excellent representation of the process:

Thus, if you want to hijack a document’s place in the search results, you simply need to post the document’s content on a page with higher PageRank. To evaluate the technique’s effectiveness, Dan attempted to hijack pages from four different websites.

Shockingly, Dan was able to hijack a page from each of the four websites. The severity of the hijacking varied for each site (in some cases, he was able to completely replace to original page with the hijacked version, and in other cases, he was only able to hijack specific search queries), but the important takeaway is that search result hijacking is possible.

In this post, Jayson DeMers investigates a range of topics related to social signals and their influence on search rankings.

Jayson begins by identifying the elements of social engagement that provide a direct and indirect impact on organic search rankings. As shown in the following graph, the direct influencers are first order social engagement signals (e.g., number of Facebook shares, number of Twitter tweets, etc.):

Strong social engagement also has an indirect impact on rankings because it bolsters the following old school ranking signals:

More backlinks and citations – People can’t link to your site or even reference it unless they know it exists, and social media helps build that awareness.

More positive reviews – When you do social media well, you build a happier (and more engaged) audience. When your audience is happy, they’re much more likely to give you positive feedback!

More on-site user engagement – If people know about your brand (and are interested in it), they are much more likely to spend time on your site (and to visit the site on a consistent basis).

Clearly, social signals already play an important role in ranking content, and that role will only expand over time. Therefore, Jayson concludes the post with a 5-step guide for launching your social media presence:

Register your brand at the most popular social media sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.).

Create a company blog, and begin blogging on a consistent schedule.

Establish your onsite content engine. The more content you have on your site, you more opportunities you have to generate social signals.

In this post, Ian Lurie offers extremely helpful advice for writing proposals that will separate you from your competition. The post is written for an Internet marketing audience, but the tips are generally applicable to anyone that writes client proposals.

The beginning of the post makes one point abundantly clear: your proposal MUST focus on the WHY. Specifically, you need to explain why clients should hire you. Don’t just tell them what you’ll do or how you’ll do it. Tell them why you’re in business and why you’re the best option.

The rest of the post is focused on specific tips for building your proposal’s imputed value:

Change your frame of mind – the proposal isn’t just a block of text; it’s a window into your company’s soul that tells clients why they should choose you instead of all other options.

One of the biggest buzzwords in the industry right now is “content marketing,” and it’s gotten to the point where people believe content is the only way to attract links. Fortunately, Rand Fishkin addresses this misconception in this week’s edition of Whiteboard Friday by describing a few inbound marketing strategies that don’t require content:

Over To You…

I hope you enjoyed this week’s SEO recap, and I want to hear from you in the comments. What were some of your favorite posts this week? How important do you think social signals are for ranking? What are some of your best tips for writing effective proposals?

About The Author

Steve Webb is an SEO audit specialist at Web Gnomes. He received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech, where he published dozens of articles on Internet-related topics. Professionally, Steve has worked for Google and various other Internet startups, and he's passionate about sharing his knowledge and experiences with others. You can find him on Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

My mind was also blown by the experiments. I definitely wouldn’t call MarketBizz “authoritative,” but it has a few authority signals. So I’m shocked that it was completely hijacked.

Not sure about G’s awareness of this study. At the very bottom of the post, Dan mentions that he reached out to the authors of the original paper (Peng and Dabek). I hope they get back to him because I’d love to hear their response.